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Increasing women's economic participation

The US-Pakistan Women’s Council works with international member corporations and Pakistani non-profit organizations to educate women and girls for exciting career paths, support women-owned businesses and grow women’s entrepreneurship, and encourage public and private entities to employ women.

Education

The US Summer Sisters Summer Exchange Program encourages gifted, low- to middle-income female high school students from Pakistan to explore education and career options through pre-college programs at US universities. The program brings students to top US universities to study science, leadership, international affairs, and others topics. Interested students from all over Pakistan go through a rigorous application and interview process with our local partner, iEARN Pakistan, and are selected based on merit.

More than a dozen university partners provide Pakistani high school girls scholarships to pre-college programs on their campuses.

American University, Community of Scholars

The Community of Scholars program is a rigorous college-credit summer program designed for students entering their junior and senior years of high school. The Community of Scholars offers academically outstanding students the chance to broaden their understanding of international relations by enrolling in a three-credit college class. Students admitted to this program will sample the undergraduate experience and take advantage of what the School of International Service (SIS) has to offer. Instructors provide dynamic lectures and engage students in discussions as well as simulations, such as a mock UN debate.

American University, National Student Leadership Conference (NSLC)

Since 1989, the National Student Leadership Conference (NSLC) has invited a select group of outstanding high school students to participate in its fast-paced, high-level, interactive summer sessions. Summer Sisters’ participants attend either the NSLC on Engineering or the NSLC on Medicine and Health Care programs, both of which are held at American University. At the NSLC on Engineering, students explore a variety of engineering fields including mechanical, civil, electrical, and biomedical engineering. At the NSLC on Medicine and Health Care, students visit medical facilities, interact with physicians and researchers, diagnose and treat patients through a simulation, and learn and practice medical and surgical techniques. In both NSLC programs, students practice core leadership skills in public speaking, team building, ethical decision-making, conflict resolution, and negotiation.

Babson College, Summer Study Program

The Summer Study Program provides a living and learning laboratory for students to focus on applying and advancing their knowledge of business and entrepreneurship. In this collaborative community, students experience first-hand how to impact and reshape organizations, industries, and the world. Each program introduces students to Babson's way of Entrepreneurial Thought and Action and provides resources and strategies for students to think about company and world issues.

Barnard College, Entrepreneurs-in-Training

Courses for the Entrepreneurs-in-Training program range from Developing a Business Idea to Getting Funded, and include three site visits to start-ups in New York. This program helps students develop their ideas and turn them into a promising plan of action with hands-on teaching by some of the most successful leaders in the industry. Students will work in groups to develop their own ventures, build public speaking skills, and ultimately pitch their ideas to mentors, staff, judges, and fellow students. Instructors for these courses and workshops are start-up experts who have founded or led ventures of their own.

Brown University, Leadership Institute

Brown University’s Leadership Institute offers an innovative and unique leadership program designed for highly motivated, intellectually curious students who are interested in social issues and creating positive change. The Leadership Institute consists of three foundational elements: academic content, leadership development, and the Action Plan. Students will work with outstanding faculty, undergraduates, and peers in a highly immersive and interactive program. In each course, students will focus on an academic topic such as science, international issues, development, global health, or social entrepreneurship. It is in the context of exploring and understanding these areas that students will also develop leadership skills.

Duke University, Summer Academy for High School Students

Duke University’s Summer Academy for High School Students offers a three-week, non-credit-bearing program aimed at attracting the next generation of global citizens from around the world. This elite program provides an academic and residential environment through which students gain a global perspective on multiple areas of interest to young leaders. Courses are offered in the areas of leadership, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and lab research work in science and technology.

Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill, Girls' Leadership Worldwide

This international leadership development program is comprised of selected students who are entering their sophomore or junior year of high school. During this residential program, girls from diverse cultures and backgrounds come together to engage in workshops and activities designed to fully awaken the leader within them, using the leadership model of Eleanor Roosevelt. Girls experience interactive workshops and field trips to New York City, the United Nations, and other significant sites, all while building supportive relationships with inspiring mentors and peers.

Georgetown University, Immersion Program

The Georgetown University Immersion Program is a three-week residential program that provides an intensive exploration of a single subject area. Students live on campus, learn from prominent faculty, and gain valuable hands-on experience through case studies, worksheets, and off-site trips in Washington, DC. The program focuses on economic policy immersion and medical immersion.

George Washington University, Summer Immersion Program

Summer Immersion is a pre-college, non-credit program for rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Summer Immersion students enroll in two-week, full-day, non-graded courses that integrate lecture-based instruction with experiential and applied activities. Students expand and deepen their knowledge of a topic through collaborative learning and exploration of diverse intellectual and cultural resources of Washington, DC. Program areas include arts, business, communications, international affairs, technology, science, writing, politics, media, and international law.

Harvard University, Secondary School Program

The Secondary School Program is designed to let high school students experience college life alongside college and adult students. Secondary Summer Program students can earn college credit in Harvard courses and explore subjects not available at high schools. They study with distinguished faculty, use state-of-the-art labs, and have access to the largest university library system in the world. By living on campus and participating in intramural sports, trivia bowl, dances, or other school activities, students can make friends from all over the globe. They can also attend college prep workshops, college fairs, and talks by Harvard students and Harvard admissions staff. Arts, humanities, social sciences, business, technology, math, science, foreign language, literature, writing, and journalism are some of the focus areas in the program.

Johns Hopkins University, Discover Hopkins

Discover Hopkins is a program concentrated on science that was created to provide a short-term undergraduate experience to pre-college students from the US and abroad. This program allows students to choose from a variety of intensive, theme-based, for-credit courses that present topics from different perspectives. Students enroll in a rigorous all-day course that meets Monday through Friday for two weeks. Classes are structured so that students are led through the subject by their instructor with morning lectures. The afternoons are setup so that either experts in the discipline present as guest speakers or students are taken on visits to locations pertinent to the academic topic. In this way, Hopkins blends experiential learning with a more traditional learning style.

Smith University, Smith Summer Science and Engineering Program

The Smith Summer Science and Engineering Program (SSEP) is a four-week residential program for exceptional young women with strong interests in science, engineering, and medicine. Each July, select high school students from across the country and abroad come to Smith College to do hands-on research with Smith faculty in the life and physical sciences and in engineering. After the program, participants return to high school better prepared to tackle tough science courses and better informed about what to expect in college.

University of Chicago, Arts and Sciences Pre-College Summer Program

University of Chicago’s intensive pre-college summer program for high school students cultivates critical thinking, innovative problem-solving, and effective communication skills through interdisciplinary work drawing upon material from the sciences, humanities, and the social sciences. Students educated in the liberal arts tradition are distinguished by their ability to successfully navigate a fast-paced world that is increasingly characterized by complexity, diversity, and change. In a program inspired by the University of Chicago’s fabled core curriculum, academically ambitious high school students will have the opportunity to experience intellectual engagement in an on-campus program taught by teams of faculty and graduate student instructors from different disciplines.

Washington University, High School Summer Pre-Medical and Pre-Engineering Institutes

High School Summer Institutes combine traditional undergraduate class and lab curriculum with organized field trips, guest lectures, and hands-on activities for students to gain valuable academic and career experience. Institutes are divided into morning and afternoon sessions. Students will have assigned readings and assignments through the program. Every student completes a student reflection essay and a final project. In the evenings, students attend academic seminars, workshops, and social events.

Entrepreneurship

Increasing women's economic participation in Pakistan means growing the number of businesses owned and managed by women. Encouraging women's entrepreneurship and supporting those businesses financially will ensure future prosperity and contribute to a robust economy. The Council coordinates with its network to train the next generation of female entrepreneurs and support those already operating in Pakistan.

The Pakistan Women Entrepreneurship Program, managed through a partnership between American University and the Lahore University of Management Sciences, is a certificate course that provides tailored, intensive assistance and leadership training to help women entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

In an effort to include more businesses owned and managed by women in their supply chains, the Council’s corporate members participate in supply chain diversity initiatives in which women entrepreneurs learn about corporate procurement requirements and potential opportunities.

Employment

The US-Pakistan Women’s Council helps private sector companies operating in Pakistan close two significant gender gaps: the hiring gap and the supplier gap. To promote hiring diversity initiatives that employ and advance more women, as well as supplier diversity initiatives that add more women’s businesses to supply chains, the Council links companies in Pakistan to its growing network. The 22,000-strong Pakistan-US Alumni Network (PUAN) of students and professionals from diverse sectors in Pakistan works with the Council to connect qualified female job candidates with our corporate members.

The Council connects companies that want to start or strengthen supplier diversity initiatives to its network of women-owned businesses. This network of small- and medium-sized women’s businesses have often received world-class capacity building programs sponsored by the US government, academic institutions like the Lahore University of Management Sciences and IBA, donors like the World Bank, and local partners. By leveraging the Council’s business connections across Pakistan, companies:

Widen their candidate pool of competitive businesses owned and managed by women;

Focus on services rather than manufacturing;

And include and support more small- and medium-sized women’s enterprises in the supply chain.

Our corporate members promote women's employment in Pakistan by providing internships to current students and recent graduates, offering initiatives and benefits that specifically benefit women, using businesses owned and managed by women in their supply chain.